It’s difficult enough to hire one new employee, so mass hiring can seem like a truly daunting task. Hiring at scale throws up some unique challenges. Effective workforce planning, efficient hiring processes and recruitment automation software all play their part.

In this post, we give you the template to develop a mass hiring recruitment plan that’s adaptable to any business that may need to start volume hiring.

Read on to see the five steps you need to start building your very own mass-hiring recruitment plan!

What is a mass hiring recruitment plan and why do you need one?

There’s a range of reasons why you might need a mass hiring recruitment plan. You could be growing the company. You may be looking to hire seasonal workers. You may have high staff turnover. Either way, it’s important to tailor a specific plan to suit the needs of your company and your candidates.

Sifting through high volumes of job applications is time-consuming and costly, a mass hiring recruitment plan should involve recruitment software to help streamline the process. You could also consider automating your initial candidate selection with real-life pre-hire assessments like ThriveMap, which are specifically designed for mass / high volume hiring. 

It’s also easier to assimilate a few people into your company than a large group. Having a high percentage of new staff means that it can be hard to maintain the strength of your company culture and employer brand. 

A mass hiring plan should identify challenges in your recruitment funnel ahead of time and help you to steer the company away from danger before it’s too late.

How to develop a mass hiring plan

So if you want to start sustainable mass hiring, follow these five simple steps and power up your recruitment strategy.

1. Assess your hiring needs

When volume recruiting it’s more important than ever to work out exactly how many roles you need and how many people for each role. It’s easier with a bulk intake to let surplus staff slip through the cracks. Work with your HR team and your existing workforce plan to assess exactly what and how much talent you need.

2. Understand the local job market

Get to grips with talent in your area. For example, if you’re based in a university town and need to mass recruit for Christmas, you need to factor in students going back home for the holidays. Knowing this will help you decide when to start recruiting and who to tailor your applications towards.

3. Define your ideal candidate

Create a profile of the ideal candidate for each of the job roles you’re recruiting for. This will help your recruiting team know what to look for when sifting through applications and conducting phone screens. If you need help in understanding your ideal candidate profile then this blog post explains the full process. It’s best to discuss this profile with your hiring managers in an intake meeting.

4. Establish a hiring timeline

Be realistic about how long it will take to fill your positions with the right people. Different jobs have different sourcing requirements. Lower-skilled positions tend to be filled by advertising, referrals and existing networks, whereas more specialised positions may require recruitment agencies or direct headhunting. Unrealistic expectations result in bad hiring and overspending, so give yourself enough time in your recruitment plan and start building your talent pool early.

5. Calculate the costs

Work out your current cost per hire and extrapolate that across the number of hires you need to make. If mass hiring is done correctly, you can lower your cost per hire through leveraging candidate selection technology to reduce the amount of time spent sifting CVs and through group interviews and bulk onboarding. Putting forward a business case for new recruiting software is an essential part of building a more efficient hiring process.

In closing

Follow these steps, and you can craft a tailored mass-hiring recruitment template to use each time you recruit at scale. 

Above all, remember to start early and put a plan in place before you rush to recruit, leaving your business at risk of developing a talent gap. 

Use these steps to develop your own personalised plan, then sit back and let the system you’ve created do the work for you.